Capital Group · Financial Services · Enterprise UX
From wet ink to one click.
A 40-field paper form and a scan-and-email workflow were the only tools three roles had to manage Small Business 401k plans. I redesigned the entire experience — role by role, sprint by sprint.
Adding a single employee to a Small Business 401k plan required a phone call, an emailed paper form, a handwritten change, a scan, an email back, parallel sign-off from two parties, and a manual system update. Seven steps across three people — with no visibility into where any request stood.
Served as sole designer across a series of design sprints, each targeting a specific role. Reframed the brief from "digitize the form" to "build a single source of truth for plan changes." Designed purpose-built interfaces for Business Owners, TPAs, and Internal Associates — all acting on the same underlying record.
MVP launched and adopted by internal associates. The scan-and-email loop replaced by a single platform. Change requests became trackable in real time. Speed and visibility improved as the same outcome — not two separate ones.
The approval chain couldn't be removed. It had to be made intentional.
Role
Sole Designer
Methodology
Design Sprints
Roles Served
3 — Owner, TPA, Associate
01 — Context & Constraints
The workflow, not the form.
The ask was straightforward: modernize a dated internal tool used to file and update Small Business 401k plans. But mapping the actual workflow made the real problem visible fast.
Say a business owner calls to add a new employee. The associate emails a paper form — all 40-50 fields, regardless of what needs to change. The owner fills in the one relevant field, scans the entire form, emails it back. From there, both the TPA and the Internal Associate need to review and sign off — in parallel, both required — before anything gets applied. Once both approvals land, the associate manually updates the system.
The real constraints
Three roles, zero differentiation
The same paper form was the interface for everyone — the business owner making a change once a year, the TPA managing compliance across multiple plans, and the Internal Associate processing updates daily. Each had completely different information needs, different action authority, and different stakes. The form treated them identically.
Dual approval was non-negotiable
Both the TPA and Internal Associate were required to sign off on every plan change before it could be applied. This wasn't bureaucracy to design around — it was a compliance requirement baked into the product. The challenge was making that required two-party approval fast, visible, and not a bottleneck. It couldn't be eliminated. It had to be made intentional.
No shared record, no shared visibility
Before the platform, there was no single place where a request lived. It existed as an email attachment, a scanned PDF, a phone call someone might or might not remember. Nobody knew where anything was in the approval chain without asking. The absence of a shared record was the root problem — everything else was downstream of that.
02 — The Strategic Frame
3 Roles. 3 Design Sprints.
We ran a series of design sprints, one per role. Each sprint was its own contained design problem. The approach let us build purpose-built interfaces for each user type — all acting on the same underlying record — without losing sight of the shared platform they needed to create.
Sprint 01 — Business Owner
Replaced the 40-50 field form with a guided, step-by-step request flow. Business owners see only the fields relevant to their specific change type. Fewer fields, less confusion, fewer errors requiring phone reconciliation.
Sprint 02 — Third Party Administrator
Designed a shared view into the plan record with the ability to review and approve change requests directly in the platform. The TPA role stays read-plus-approve — no direct edit access to a regulated record, but no more working entirely outside the system.
Sprint 03 — Internal Associate (Primary MVP)
The core deliverable. Organized 40-50 fields into tabbed sections: Plan Info, Contributions, Eligibility, Distributions, Admin. Both approvals — TPA and associate — now tracked in the same place. Iterated through multiple rounds of user testing with real associates.
Business Owner portal — dashboard and guided change request flow
The approval workflow was a constraint, not a choice
The TPA and Internal Associate both had to approve every plan change — in parallel, both required. That wasn't going away. What we could change was how it happened. Instead of a request disappearing into an email chain and resurfacing whenever someone remembered to follow up, every change request now lived in the platform. Both reviewers were notified simultaneously, could see the same record, and acted on the same request. The approval chain stayed intact. The chaos around it was gone.
03 — The Key Insight
The Cmd+F Finding
User testing on the Internal Associate experience surfaced a specific tension. Some associates pushed back on the tabbed layout — they wanted a single, scrollable long page. We pushed back and asked why.
The stated preference vs. the real need
Some associates pushed back on the tabbed layout — they wanted a single long page. When we asked why, the answer was specific: they used Cmd+F to jump directly to the field they needed. Tabbed navigation broke that behavior. Giving them a long page would have solved the stated preference and recreated the cognitive load problem. We gave them what they actually needed: a persistent search bar and a View All tab. The organized structure stayed intact. Power users got their speed back.
Earning trust through testing, not assertion
Associates who had processed paper forms for years knew every workaround in the existing system. The tabbed interface asked them to trust that the workarounds wouldn't be needed. That trust had to be earned. The Cmd+F finding was the inflection point — once we showed that we understood how they actually worked, and addressed it directly, resistance shifted to advocacy.
View All tab with persistent search — “safe harbor” surfaces two matches across sections
04 — The Design Decisions
Authority Encoded in Interface, Not Just Permissions
Tabs as primary navigation, search as power-user escape hatch
The tabbed structure — Plan Info, Contributions, Eligibility, Distributions, Admin — maps to how 401k plans are structured as documents. Associates can build a mental model quickly. The search bar resolves the navigation problem for experienced users without dismantling the structure.
The View All tab as deliberate pressure valve
Rather than fighting the preference for a long page, we accommodated it explicitly. View All mode gives associates the ability to drop into an unfiltered view for complex changes touching multiple sections, or for senior associates who have internalized the full field set.
The entire IA shifts by role, not just the permissions
A Business Owner sees only fields relevant to their change request. An Internal Associate sees the full record with workflow context — pending requests, change history, validation status. Same underlying data. Completely different frames.
05 — Outcomes
One Place. No More Guessing.
Seven steps became one request
The phone call, the emailed form, the scan, the email back, the chased approvals, and the manual update — replaced by a single tracked request that all three parties act on in the same platform.
Speed and visibility were the same outcome
Before, nobody knew where a request was in the approval chain without picking up the phone. The platform didn't speed things up by cutting steps — it sped things up by making every step visible. When reviewers can see what's waiting and act without coordination overhead, the required approval chain stops feeling like a bottleneck.
The compliance requirement became a feature
The dual TPA and Internal Associate approval was non-negotiable. In the paper process, it was invisible friction. In the platform, it became an explicit, trackable workflow state. Plan sponsors could see their request was in review. Associates could see what needed action. The requirement didn't change. The experience of it did.
MVP shipped · feedback in hand
Launched with real associates. Post-launch feedback captured and grounded in actual usage — a better foundation for phase two than any pre-launch assumption.